Born in the bicultural/bilingual setting of El Paso, Texas/Juárez, Chihuahua, attended the University of Texas El Paso, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, & the University of Oregon. Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing & Literature, taught at the University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, the University of Texas El Paso, and Laney College, Oakland where he founded the Mexican and Latin American Studies Dept.

About Me

Rafael Jesús González, born in the bicultural/bilingual setting of El Paso, Texas/Juárez, Chihuahua, attended the University of Texas El Paso, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, & the University of Oregon. Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing & Literature, he has taught at the University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, the University of Texas at El Paso, and Laney College, Oakland (where he founded the Mexican and Latin American Studies Dept.)
He has thrice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He was Poet in Residence at the Oakland Museum of California and the Oakland Public Library under the Poets & Writers “Writers on Site” award in 1996. He served as contributing editor for The Montserrat Review and received the Annual Dragonfly Press Award for Literary Achievement in 2002. In 2003 he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English & Annenberg/CPB for his writing. In June 2007, he was honored for excellence in poetry at the 20th World Congress of Poets, Montgomery, Alabama.

Wednesday evening was filled with poetry, music and activism when Rafael Jesús González (poet, professor, artist and bilingual studies innovator) read to a full house at La Raza Galería Posada. He was accompanied by flautist and Rooted in Community co-director Gerardo O. Marín and artist and activist Colin Miller.

The event was hosted by Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol / Writers of the New Sun and opened with local writer JoAnn Anglin. She spoke of the group’s founding in 1993, its monthly writing group, monthly readings and of the group’s anthology, “Voices of the New Sun: Songs and Stories / Voces del Nuevo Sol: Cantos y Cuentos.”

González was introduced by Dr. Fausto Avendaño, a retired Sacramento State foreign language professor, who explained that the evening’s reading would be bilingual. Poems, stories and introductions would be read in Spanish, and English versions, not translations, would follow.

The two men met many years ago, and Avendaño said González’s poetry resembled Federico García Lorca’s, and that “the images struck (him) because it is hard to equal García Lorca.” The idea González put forth that “poetry is just a game with words, images and metaphors” also reminded Avendaño of García Lorca.

González read in front of a backdrop of swirling color, thanks to the current exhibit, “Ballet Folklorico-Lace and Ribbons: The Making of Cultural Affirmation-Costumes from the Instituto Mazatlan Bellas Artes.” He opened by burning a small leaf, a custom he performs before each reading, one that comes from his ancestors.

“We burn a little bit of fragrant smoke to invoke the gods so that what we say does not offend them or the audience,” he said, and suggested that politicians try this custom.

Judging from the full house that remained through nearly three hours, in a room that was often too warm, the sage-burning worked.

He began with a poem honoring Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish New Year. As with most poems, González provided some background. His third poem was one of his first published poems, and he says the topic is “as pertinent today as it was then.” The poem’s last line is “Señor, how much is this?”

To which he responded, “Too much. Far, far too much. Many of us were asked to give up our culture and our language to assimilate. We lost our names and took on English names to protect us from prejudices.”

Being an activist and a poet, many of the evening’s poems were politically charged. He read several poems about heroes like César Chávez, whose “voice will bear fruit and there will be rejoicing in the furrows, in the ditches.” He reminded the audience that “the battles of the fieldworker are not done,” and he urged people to remember the blood of those who died “when you say grace above your meal.”

Several nerves were touched when he read “To My Students,” with its memorable line of “You who can read, do not take it for granted.” Following the poem, he said that 1968 California “had the best education system in the country,” but that Proposition 13 (1977/78) “undermined the whole infrastructure of the state of California, and (he) quickly saw the literacy rate plummet.”

At the time, he was teaching at Laney Community College in Oakland, where the oldest student was 79 and the youngest was 18, and where “real education was taking place.” Today, he says that it is “to our shame that the wealthiest state cannot afford to teach its children” and called "No Child Left Behind" the most anti-education act.

Poems about the Golden Gate Bridge, houses, and jade hearts preceded more hero poems. One was about Víctor Jara, one of the imprisoned intellectuals in post-Allende Chile. “The Hands” relates the near-myth story of Jara’s hands being severed by guards, and the refrain of “each drop, a note against silence” served as a reminder for each of us not to remain silent.

Perhaps the most touching of González’s poems was “Blankets,” written for “my mother (who) still covers me with rainbows.” This piece, as with a few others, was accompanied by Marín, who played two different native Mexican flutes.

The music served to make González’s voice stronger, and it seemed to work better with the Spanish readings. But Marín, who always watched his maestro, never overpowered the words.

Following a poem written as part of his dissertation about the influence of the gypsy idiom on García Lorca’s work, he spoke about living and writing.

“Everything we do is a game,” he said. “Living is a celestial game that is sometimes peaceful, sometimes difficult. Sometimes words are very volatile. To name a thing can take away its power, (and that) gives us power over nature.” He called naming a “sacred act.”

About writing, González said, “Everybody can write.” He urged the audience to “write for fun. Write for the music of the words. Write to overcome your pain. Write to celebrate your joys.”

He closed with “If We Do Not Speak,” influenced by his invitation to the 20th World Congress of Poets in 2005. While driving home from Santa Fe, N.M., he considered what he wanted to tell his fellow colleagues who spoke in many languages. The opening line is “If we do not speak to praise the Earth / It is best we keep silent.”

He closed with a reminder that “we have never been expelled from paradise. We live in paradise,” and that we “need to care for and love the earth more.”

Treating of songs----------in a wild wood plaininfested with twirling sprigs---------of sky-tearing mills,a figure indulging age & a cavern mindspeared the sun smearing his lance with light.

-----(& a soiled star lit a cigarette star-----to guide a warrior to his washing)

-----If a star were to happen,-----a song born-----to some decisive yearpromising bread & fishesone was not sure would multiply,would the uncertain glory of an acute woundpay the price of spilling peace-----into a fouled net of undertaking?

High daring walks on spindly legs& stars too often are the cause of death.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

If truth be toldit's all aboutspilling the beans —whether it's from a tray let goin the school lunch roomor telling it like it isfrom the podium.It's speaking truth —----------------whether to poweror to the powerless;it's blowing the whistlewhen the whistle needs blowing.More often than not--------------it's about courage —a heart grown too bigwith outrage----------------or compassion,more often than nota heart grown bigwith compassion outrageduntil it explodes------------------- spilling the beans.

On this day in 1957, 1,000 troops secured Little Rock Central High, allowing nine black students to enter and attend school. It was a historic day in the Civil Rights movement not because it was the first school to desegregate, but because it was the first time federal intervention was used to do so.

When the Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine in 1954, banning segregated public schools, it left up to individual states and communities the issue of how and when integration would proceed. Little Rock had approved a gradual approach; the high school would integrate first, then the middle schools, then elementary. But when the time came for black students to enroll in Central High, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus reneged on the deal, surrounding the school with National Guard troops on the first day of the year to protect people, he claimed, from the caravans of protestors on their way to Little Rock. In fact, the Guard denied entrance to the nine black students who attempted to enroll as a crowd of about 300 people gathered. Within days, the spectacle was over, but the Guard remained, napping on the school's lawn and reading newspapers to pass the time. The approach that Southern moderates like William Faulkner had preached was quickly turning from "go slow" into "don't go."

More than two weeks passed before a federal injunction withdrew the National Guard from the school. When Little Rock police officers escorted the nine black students into school on the morning of September 23, crowds of protestors outside became so menacing that administrators had the students slip out a side entrance before noon.

And so two days later, President Eisenhower ordered the Screaming Eagles 101st Airborne Division stationed in Kentucky to escort the nine black students back in — and ensure they were able to stay. By then, the national media attention on Little Rock had become intense, drawing massive crowds — although, as the school newspaper reminded students, the protestors represented less than 1 percent of the town's population.

Of the "Little Rock Nine," as the black students became known, only three graduated from Central High. Five finished their education elsewhere; one was expelled for responding to the constant harassments of her classmates, once by overturning a bowl of chili on a tormentor. (The bullies went largely unpunished.) All nine credited their parents for encouraging them to enroll — and attend class — despite intense scrutiny and racism.

On this day in 1789, the First Federal Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the recently ratified Constitution. Ten of them were ultimately adopted to become what's known as the Bill of Rights.

The amendments were the result of a major compromise between opposing factions, the Federalists — who thought the Constitution was a sound and sufficient document — and the Anti-Federalists, who worried that it gave far too much power to the central government and didn't protect individual freedoms. The two sides were at an impasse, and the Constitution was at risk of being rejected, until an agreement was reached that, if the Constitution was ratified, Congress would add on a bill of rights. The Federalists believed the addition was unnecessary, and the anti-Federalists believed it wasn't enough ... but both sides conceded for the sake of the common good.

The first two amendments, concerning the number of constituents and the payment for Congressmen, were rejected. The other 10, each a single sentence, provided for such rights as the freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a speedy trial by jury without cruel or unusual punishment, and the right of states to govern themselves in any way not expressly prohibited by the Constitution.

An additional 17 amendments have been added to the Constitution since then. The most recent one, passed in 1992, was that second article proposed and rejected back in 1789, delaying any change to Congress's pay until the following session. The very first article proposed is still pending before state legislatures.

As the anonymous saying goes, "Democracy is cumbersome, slow and inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail."

The balance of day & nightis lit by the early sapphire of dawn-----& the late opal of dusk.It rises on obelisk of nephrite, of jadeto the cardinal point of the air,the lever of the wind,----& on each copper plate----are measured art & consequences--------(love weighs on the back---------of indecision,---------on the loins of desire.)The fulcrum of autumnholds over chaostremulous & irresolute----feeling, thought —--------love, beauty, truth —dreams, always dreams, just dreams.

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¡Gracias!

Rafael Jesús González, poet, professor, artist and bilingual studies innovator, is a life-long writer who lives between Mexico and Berkeley. He has been the elder in a Latino men's ritual group, Xochipilli, which works with the Oakland Museum of California's annual Dia de Los Muertos. He has contributed art installations there and also for the Mexican Museum and the Mission Cultural Center, both in San Francisco.

Prof. Gonzalez' formal education took place at the University of Texas, El Paso, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, & the University of Oregon.

He has taught throughout the west, and advises and contributes articles to literary journals. His most recent publication is The Lunatic Muse, which he will have for sale at this reading.

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Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun was established in 1993, a cooperative group to encourage writers of Latino, Chicano, and Native American backgrounds. For information on our group or activities, contact Graciela Ramirez, Ph: 916-456-5323.For information on LRGP, see: www.larazagaleriaposada.org

(201 years after independence from Spain, 101 years after the revolution, 491 years after the Spanish invasion, as in all the Americas, colonialism continues.)

----------------------Mexico

-----------------(homage to the country in erotic hues)

To give you gender would be to do as God did not.The banana bloom hangs like a horse's sex& your rough breasts give oil to suck —you have countless wombs in your mines& the golden testicles of the mango.-----(To vary your heterosexual orgasms-----you celebrate the homosexual feast of the bulls.)Soft you are not, my country —-----but hard as human fate —----------ball of steel at the bottom of my gut,----------bitter taste on the tongue of my mind.At the fall of the sun you have featheredyour mountains wear filigree of veins on their foreheads& in the jungles of your coastsfly dragonflies of buoyant opal.Your electric & wild body trembles with passion& you think in color through your murals,dream your tactile dreams of songstied to the earth by the strings of the guitar-----(& there are no strange songs to your dreams-----nor is laughter lacking in your sad nightmares.)---------------Listen, my country,with crepe paper kissesthe bougainvillea kisses the penis of the tower& the suffocated plumbago gives platonic kisses to the air.The sun bites the breasts of your gray hills& the hands of your palms caress the moon.-----Soft you are not, my country,----------but cruel like human love,----------demanding like the holy faith.

Godmother moon looks at uswith impassive face& blesses allwith her lent light.She protects us from meteorites& is midwife of terrestrial lifefor without her pull of the seasthere would not be the poolsof the tides that birthed uswho crawl or walk on land.The moon blesses uswith her borrowed light.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

--Ten years ago in September 2001, I flew to Boston for the wedding of my godson Max Villalva Valdés and decided to stay on to visit friends intending to return from Boston to San Francisco on September 11. However, I changed my return flight a few days earlier to attend another celebration of friends by San Francisco Bay. So it is that on September 11, 2001, I was able to write:

Love & Thoughts to my Friends on a Dark Day

Since early this morning when a friend from New England called with the news of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York, I have been in a daze, too stunned to sort out my feelings, my thoughts except for confirmation of my deep abhorrence of violence. Certainly pain and anger are there — and great fear.

I have not been able to get through to my friends in New York nor to my friends in Washington, D.C.; I do not know if they are well or not.

And despite the images on television, there is disbelief. How could it happen here? How could it happen to us? The mightiest contemporary nation, the current most powerful empire is vulnerable. Seeing the images of the twin towers, symbol of the greatest wealth and power on Earth, flaming, smoking, and finally collapsing against the skyline of monoliths that is New York made me think, in the midst of the horror of it all, of Goliaths falling in the plain. The Earth is shaken by their fall; the death, the pain suffered by so many through their fall wrings the heart. I am stunned by the pain of it.

But who the Davids are we do not know. Certainly not heroes to me nor to any one I know; villains rather. Davids in size only. But still, seeing some televised images of jubilation in parts of Palestine/Israel, they must be heroes to some — and to some in other places of the world as well.

Terrorism is a frightful term; even more horrible is its reality. What does it mean? Webster’s New World Dictionary succinctly defines it as: 1) use of terror and violence to intimidate, subjugate, etc., especially as a political weapon or policy; and 2) intimidation and subjugation produced in this way. Terror.

I see those images of jubilation on the television and I wonder what could induce such elation at such destruction, such death, such suffering. Terror. Terror like that in New York today except on a smaller scale, day to day terror at the hands of Israeli soldiers, and terror in response, and then more terror in retaliation — a story without end.

The day to day terror in Iraq with children ill and no medicine with which to treat them, little food to give them. The day to day terror in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. The day to day terror in so many parts of Latin America, of Asia, of everywhere. A policy, a political weapon to subjugate.

And who has most to gain by it? A hundred images come to mind, but a simple, nagging cipher blinks on and off against them all: we in the United States are six percent (6%) of the world’s people and yet we consume sixty percent (60%) of what the Earth gives. (And, we hold the highest proportion of our people in prison.) These are formulas of terror.

And we are vulnerable. And I think — the only protection is justice. The only protection is to be so just, so fair that none would wish us ill. No, not even the gods are so just, but if only we tried. If only we concerned ourselves with sharing the Earth’s wealth with everyone of our brothers and sisters. If only we honored the Earth and protected her so that she might continue to sustain us. If only we honored each other. If only we honored life.

I would like to think that we could respond to this horror in New York and Washington, D.C. with a commitment to justice for the world. Not merely the primitive, crude vengeance and retaliation I hear demanded, but true justice that would put an end to terror, not only the terror such as that of this day in New York and in the Capital, but the day to day terror of hunger, of lack of medicine, lack of shelter, of education, of freedom and the violence all that brings. Terror.

But what I see does not make me hopeful. I am afraid. I am afraid of our institutionalized terrorism, our policies of terror that hold the world in thrall. I am afraid of the man in the office of President of the United States who was not elected into office, afraid of his associates, afraid of the Supreme Court which has broken its trust as impartial interpreter of the law of the land. I am afraid of this President who would destroy the Earth for the profit of it, who insists upon an insane system of nuclear “defense” to further enforce a policy of terror.

I am afraid for the peoples of the world. I am just as afraid for us citizens of this United States. I am afraid that the tragedy of today will be used to justify the destruction of what freedom, what civil liberties we have, of a democracy for which clearly the President of the United States and his ilk have no respect.

I am afraid of Goliaths and of the Davids they breed.

But still, more deeply rooted than my fear is my love of the Earth and of its people and of all our relations. Because of this, I trust that our work toward justice and peace will go on in joy of life and that, for all the darkness, it will prevail.

It was on this day in 2001 that the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were destroyed launching the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and bringing in a renewed era of fascism in the United States.

[I do not call names, but I do name and and try to name as accurately as possible. I use the word fascism in its classical definition as it appears in Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition, 1968 edition:*fas.cism (fash´iz’m), n. [It. fascismo <fascio, political group, organization, club fascis; see FASCES], 1. [F-], The doctrines, methods, or movement of the Fascisti. 2. [sometimes F-], a system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of the opposition (unions, other, especially leftist, parties, minority groups, etc.), the retention of private ownership of the means of production under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism and racism, glorification of war, etc.: first instituted in Italy in 1922. 3. a) the political philosophy and movement based on such doctrines and policies. b) fascist behavior.]Now, the nation is deep in an illegal, immoral occupation of Iraq, and an untenable war in Afghanistan making the world infinitely more vulnerable to terrorism by nations (such as the U. S.) and organizations (such as al-Qaeda.) Those same fascist forces, bankrupt morally, have bankrupt the nation (and the world) economically.

But the date of September 11 is a day of tragedy for more than one reason.

On a more personal level, it was on September 11, 1991 that my beloved friend and comadre, scholar, organizer, activist Guillermina Valdés de Villalva was killed when a Continental Airlines airplane crashed near Houston, Texas. Sick with pain and rage, I wrote

I will always struggle for the good,heart in the snout,a cry in the heart& the heart in the shout.Thus I danced last night,-----tiré la chancla,---------wriggled my butt,--------------meneé el culountil the puppy hoursof the morningbecause such as it is for someto do penance for othersfor others it is up to usto make grace for the rest& so I promiseI will continue to wriggle my buttuntil I cannot& I will keep my tail greenuntil it is covered by dust.

It was on September 11, 1973 that the U. S. C.I.A. instigated military coup in Chile overthrew the legally elected and popular government of Salvador Allende initiating an era of brutal dictatorship and bloodshed. President Allende was murdered as was the poet-compose Víctor Jara among thousands of others. The aging poet Pablo Neruda was held under house arrest where he died soon after.

I remember you in Hollandwhere the roses lack color& the soul you gave the machinedoes not know the people.Yours is the vice of loving& on your tongue even the thistle----knows how to give honey —there is blood like that of Federico----that knows how to hurt.But here the pupils are of glass& despair is a drop of waterthat runs through the canals golden,not with lemons but dead leaves.

---------------------II

It has been nine years that in Holland,I wrote you a poem —------full of water, dry leaves------& a vision of lemons.

It was November —--------------------now it is October —on the tenth I count my thirty-eighth& you have died.

The death of poet musician Víctor Jara has become a legend, almost a popular myth. It is told that being held in the Stadium of Santiago de Chile among the multitude of political prisoners, he took his guitar and began to sing. His songs being so popular, the other prisoners accompanied him. The guards then grabbed his guitar and stomped it to pieces under their boots. Then with their bayonets they cut off Victor’s hands. According to the story, Victor continued singing until, his blood draining into the sand, he died.